Since April, the Chicago Human Rhythm Project has been traversing the city, bringing percussive dance into neighborhoods far and wide as part of a two-month festival called Stomping Grounds. The series kicked off April 2 at the Chicago Cultural Center, followed by five neighborhood performances...

Picture the scene: We’re backstage at SEASONS and the mood is tense because SUMMER, that mercurial Chicago star, has yet to show. The clock is ticking on Memorial Day and they’re prepping the understudy, COLD DAMP SPRING. The show must go on, right? Just then, with big, dramatic timing, enters...

When did you last see a baby at a show? And when did you last see a baby in a show? If you attended one of the early previews of Tracy Letts’ “Mary Page Marlowe” at the Steppenwolf Theatre in 2016, you likely saw a bona fide, real-life baby on the stage. The idea behind this wise and moving play...

It was a star-studded night at Steppenwolf Theatre Company's annual gala, where 675 guests joined the company's ensemble members to celebrate 42 seasons. The May 12 event, held in an enormous industrial space not far from the theater, included a program that featured actor Rainn Wilson, known for...

Since Antonin Scalia, the late and famously flamboyant associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, once taught — very happily, by his own account — at the University of Chicago, there is a certain symmetry to the arrival of "The Originalist" this past weekend at Court Theatre from...

If class and social status determine how we live, why shouldn’t it determine how we die? That premise is the jumping-off point for Lucas Baisch’s “Refrigerator,” now in a world premiere with First Floor Theater. In Baisch’s world — a dystopia wracked by war, famine and decay, as is the way of dystopias...

Hamilton

“Hamilton,” the phenomenally successful musical written and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, brought so much posthumous celebrity to Alexander Hamilton that America’s first secretary of the treasury kept his fragile spot on the front of the 10-dollar bill. But Miranda and his producer, Jeffrey Seller,...

“I almost didn’t make it here,” Leslie Odom Jr. said in his Tony acceptance speech in 2016. There’s a story behind that, and he tells it here. It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else originating the role of Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” which earned him that Tony. Odom doesn’t pretend his path...

Broadway in Chicago announced on Thursday that a new 20-week block of tickets for “Hamilton” will go on sale May 8 at 10 a.m. The tickets will be available for performances from September 4 through January 20, 2019. The tickets will be available at CIBC Theatre box offices, the Broadway in Chicago...

Tribune photographer Chris Sweda went behind the scenes at the new, feminist-focused Firebrand Theatre Company as they created their new musical production of “9 to 5 the Musical.” The Dolly Parton musical, originally a 1980 movie, has been given a storefront staging at the Den Theatre in Wicker...

“If y’all ready for ‘A Dope Comedy Show,’ let me hear you say, ‘Hell yeah!’” The voice booms over the sound system as comedian Dave Helem — a Chicago native now living in Los Angeles — steps onto the small stage in the back of North Bar in Bucktown holding a plate of pizza in one hand and a drink...

Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Jose Limon, Erick Hawkins and Paul Taylor. This is a short list of pioneers who shaped and transformed 20th century modern dance in America. Taylor started his company in 1954 and remains one of the world’s most influential living choreographers. So it’s a big deal...

The last time Ballet Nacional de Cuba came to Chicago was 2003. Prima ballerina Viengsay Valdes was 26 at the time. Her performance at the Auditorium Theatre was anticipated by Tribune critic Sid Smith as “likely to knock our socks off.” Smith’s comment was an understatement; 15 years later, Valdes...

When visiting Hamlin Park Theater for the annual Dance Shelter series, it’s important to know a couple things: 1) This is an iconic modern dance space, developed by Chicago Moving Company (CMC)’s late founder Nana Shineflug as one of the first Chicago Park District arts partners to convert historic...

Tanztheater, or “dance theater,” is a post-World War I expressionist art form originating in Germany and Austria which blends dance and theatrical techniques. Ellyzabeth Adler studied tanztheater as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, developing her own style of dance theater...

God is in “Carousel.” So is human love and sexual desire, but let’s leave that aside for a moment. In 1945, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II created the greatest musical ever written about the brevity of life. Its signature and now retrospective aspect is that a guy who makes a series of...

Back in 2012, the actor Denzel Washington infuriated the Air Line Pilots Association with the vivacious veracity of his portrayal of a charmingly alcoholic airline captain in the Robert Zemeckis film "Flight." In a pivotal scene of the movie, Washington's Capt. Whitaker finds himself locked inside...

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” they sing in “Hamilton.” Well, if you have control over the combination of your biography and all your hit songs, the answer is perfectly simple: you do. There’s a big difference between pop stars and politicians: the ones whose hits stay in demand can...